My story post 29, or what I remember about the winter of 1969.

I moved to Rincon valley and joined up with Wilderness in spring of ’69 but the winter of ’69 was pretty insane. We had a lot of surf that winter and some very serious storms come through Ventura.

What the storms did to the local surf breaks was pretty amazing. As I remember it, there was a big rain at the end of January and one near the end of February. The first rain deposited so much sand on Ventura point that there were literally no cobble stone rocks exposed from the mouth of the Ventura River to the pier.

The affect on the surf at the point was significant. While it lasted the new sand point provided by the storm made one long continuing wave from the top of the point all the way down inside. Usually there are a number of sections, sometimes make able sometimes not, but this new sand point had a wave that was as perfect as any I’d ever seen. Catch the wave at the top of the point set your edge for a driving bottom turn climb and drop, turn back, bottom turn again… repeat, repeat.

The other spot that got dramatically altered… for a short time, was Santa Clara River mouth. Again so much sand was deposited that a very long sand point formed on the south side of the river. The surf there was as good as any point wave on the map. It took some work to get to it because you had to cross the river, it got almost waist deep in spots but on the other side was the gold. I got down there a couple times with the local crew when in the afternoon Santa Anna winds had died down enough. Mild off shore winds and roping long rights for a good quarter mile…. what fun that was.

As more rain came things got pretty ugly. Eventually so much debris washed down the Ventura river and got deposited on the beach that it became impossible to even walk to the waters edge along the point. The water along the point was one giant mass of floating drift wood that stretched half way to the end of the pier. The Santa Clara river actually change its course, turned toward Ventura and ended up busting through the Ventura Marina washing the boats that were docked along the south end of the marina out to sea. Then the surf deposited the boats along the beach below south jetty.

We’ve had big rains a number of times since then that have made for great surfing. But, there has never been anything like the storms of 1969 yet.

D.R.

Storm surf at the Ventura Pier.

While in Wave Front Surf Shop one day this week I took notice of a new Boardworks model that was white with a faux wood stringer painted on it. Boardworks of course being a molded board it’s usually pretty easy to tell them apart from the traditional foam and fiberglass boards, but the white with a faux wood stringer board could fool you for a minute. I find it curious that surfboards that aren’t made with traditional materials and methods still follow the traditional colors and lines.

Seeing that board and then receiving some pictures from my e-mail friend Barry of Dale Velzy got me to thinking again about the future of surfboards. So this may go along with my post of 9/30/07 here.

What we now call the Surf Board Industry had its beginnings just 50 or so years ago. And the number of guys that are still at it that started with either wood boards or the early foam boards is a very small piece of the overall builders pie. Shaping a board out of a big block of foam, learning the process by trial and error and looking up to those that did it before and learning from them is the tradition of shaping and making surfboards.

This tradition is very important to surfing history. It is core to what surfing is about. And as more and more years are added to surfing history or, as surfing gets older so too do the remaining shapers that were brought up in the tradition get older. There will come a time when they are only in pictures. The boards they made will remain though, held by those that honor the tradition.

The late Dale Velzy in his shaping room.

Added 3/17/08

Some may not see the point in the shaping tradition, and that’s fine, but the fact that it’s possible with your hands and eyes to sculpt a finely foiled and balanced object to ride waves on is really pretty incredible. Well, with the help of a computer a machine can do that! That’s correct, and any bone head can be shown in short order how to finish the machined blank off. And there are those in China and Thailand that finish blanks off all day long day in and day out that know nothing about the surfboard dynamic. And that’s called shaping?

An interesting side note…. I was acquainted with this guy some years ago that was a pattern maker. He worked for a big sports equipment company. His job was to make the patterns for the wood drivers in a set of gulf clubs. The company had very sophisticated computer controlled machines to make the patterns but they found the end result wasn’t good enough… it needed to be tweaked by hand. The human hand and eye did a better job. If I remember right they ended up ditching the machine process altogether and my friend ended up making the patterns from scratch.

The hand shaped tradition.

D.R.

It’s curious when you meet someone and it turns out that your paths never crossed but had been very close parallel lines.

One of the older guys that brings boards by the shop for laminating, Chuck Vinson, spent a few hours at the shop doing some special resin color and line work on one of his boards this week. We met last year when he first came to inquire about getting some glass work done and when he introduced himself mentioned that he was a laminator at MP during the Saticoy days. So we started chatting about when he worked at MP… he started right after I left… and what he did after that.

Turns out that after he left MP he went up to Santa Barbara and started a shop there, as well, eventually went to the North Shore and worked there. On the North Shore he worked for Lightning Bolt. The board he was working on at the shop was a Lightning Bolt replica for wetsand. While on the North Shore he worked and roomed with one of my high school surf buddies, his name was Wayne. Wayne’s mom used to take us to surf that I mentioned in this blog entry.

So Chuck is a guy that started working on surfboards when he was in high school, like me. Then works at MP only starts working there shortly after I leave. Then goes up to Santa Barbara and starts a shop. I worked at Wilderness in Santa Barbara. Then goes to Hawaii and ends up rooming with one of my high school surf buddies. Our paths finally cross almost 40 years later when he comes by my shop last year. I enjoyed reminiscing with him.

The Reminiscing kept going too because Nat Young did a presentation and book signing at Ventura Surf Shop Friday 3/7. Because Nat and Mike Cundith were buddies he used to come stay at the Rincon Valley ranch house when he was in California. I hadn’t seen him since August of 1969 when he came to the house, so I made sure I was at the event. The presentation was great and the book ‘The Complete History of Surfing’ is excellent.

D.R.

A few random thoughts on what we’ve come to call the short board revolution, which took place between late 1967 and 1970-71. Though surfboards had evolved before then and evolved after.

How things changed is a matter of personal history, that is, personal to the individual. What I recollect and what others remember may have similarities but not quite be the same. As well what was happening in the Ventura Santa Barbara area was not the same thing happening in San Diego or Santa Cruz areas.

In Ventura and Santa Barbara there were a small number of board builders and shapers. I just happened to be one of them. Surfing was changing and some guys fell out of the business because they didn’t fit into or follow the change. For instance in Ventura Tom Hale stopped making boards. I do know that he was doing some laminating in 1968 for Morey-Pope. The MP shop on Front street could not produce all the McTavish Trackers that Richard Deese and I shaped so some of the lam work was sourced to Hale. When MP stopped production of the Tracker and moved out to Saticoy as far as I know Hale stopped board building.

Though as some of the builders fell off they were replaced by knew guys entering the surfboard crafting thing. Even still there was only a small handful of guys making and shaping from 1968 to 1970-71. As well the big labels didn’t start to drop off until about 1970 anyway. In ’69 MP was making hundreds of boards a month. So were labels like Dewey Weber with boards like the Weber Ski. So there were labels keeping shapers employed.

But for sure as the established labels began taking a beating there were guys that made surfboards that ended up with out a job. And if you wanted to make surfboards you needed to follow the trends. If you were one of the guys making the trends ok but, if not, you had to follow or be out of work. As an example… I liked and surfed the Greenough style board but by ’71 a lot of guys wanted flat bottomed down railed boards. If I didn’t shape the flat bottom down rail I just didn’t have any work.

Having my start as a production shaper in 1967 and having steady work for the following 3 years pretty much right through the big change was great but by ’71 the whole surfboard making thing got rough for a number of board builders. The surfboard business got very fragmented and very localized.

What was…. a number of larger established labels run very business like with employees and fairly nice stores, which by the way sold almost only surfboards. And what was changed to... an underground type thing with small local shops that catered to a local clientele almost exclusively, and a lot of shops weren’t run very business like at all.

D.R.

In the shaping bay circa 1970

My story post 28

How I ended up leaving MP in the Spring of ’69 and moving on to Wilderness was pretty impulsive. But the story goes like this…..

After the winter layoff Morey-Pope had got their new factory set up in Saticoy. So everyone reported out there for work. The shop was big and being set up for a production of 200 surfboards a week. I say being set up because when we all started working out there the place needed tweaking to get up to speed. One of the problem areas was the sanding booths.

My friend Mike Cundith was the MP sander. The sanding room at the Front street shop he had was vented very well, Mike was very happy with it. However the sanding rooms in Saticoy didn’t vent well at all. Mike had nothing but trouble with them and was continually frustrated because the shop manager was unwilling or unable to get the venting problem fixed. I don’t know how many days and weeks went by but eventually Mike had enough. It must have been mid morning when he threw open the sanding room door one day ripping the mask from his face in a cloud of sanding dust and yelled “ I’ve had it…. I quit “ …. Right then and there he left and didn’t come back.

My other Friend Richie West laminated for MP. I honestly don’t remember when he left, was it the same day? Something tells me no, but if it wasn’t it was shortly after. So there was some unrest in the place and frustration…. Mostly management issues. Then one day I found out the head shaper, Richard, was making a buck off of every board I shaped. Looking back I don’t know if it should have bothered me or not but at the time it did. Maybe it was because he never told me… and I felt left out of the loop… I don’t know but my friends leaving out of frustration, the management issues, the buck a board thing was the last straw and I decided to quit too.

When Mike left he went and started setting up the Wilderness shop in Santa Barbara in an old ice house between E. Cabrillo Blvd. and the rail road tracks along East Beach. And me…. Quitting and walking away from a good paying job? Well I had been talking with Mike about joining up with the Wilderness guys…. Which was Mike, Richie and Peter Moscogenis. So after walking out of the MP shop I went to my place on Buena Vista in Ventura, packed my stuff and moved in with Mike, his wife, Richie and Jamo at their place in Rincon Valley and started setting up at the ice house… shaping boards at Wilderness.

D.R.

A veiw just up the over grown driveway above the Rincon Valley ranch house were the Wilderness gang lived. Me sitting on the ground playing my guitar.

My Story post 27

There are a few boards that have stuck in my memories from all the boards I made myself during the evolution days.

That first 7’2 was sum what of a tear drop shaped outline…. That is it had a fairly straight hip area, wide point was above center and the nose tapered more to a point. The next board I remember having was one I made at MP before I left in the spring of ’69 and moved up with Mike, Richie and gang to work at Wilderness in Santa Barbara.

Anyway, the board was 6’8 and for some reason I couldn’t get the deck line to work the way I’d like and it ended up with a long sweeping curve in the deck that peaked back of center…. Not a typical “ S “ deck line. The board worked well except the fin was made from a green pigmented panel which gave the thing a soft flex. The learning curve was continuing… don’t use pigmented panels for fins if you want a nice stiff snapping fin. The green finned board was a little different and I got teased about it some but it still rode good enough. Because of the fin it worked better in short beach break type waves, which during that particular time we got a number of great days on the back side of Faira and at Over Head BB. Now try surf Over Head BB, the place is way over crowded. Back then… we were the only guys there.

Another board I remember making was about in the middle of summer ’69. I wanted something that would float real well for the small summer surf so I made a generic type flat bottom board with soft rails around 6’6 x 21 x 3 and kept thickness out on the rails. The board floated me great but wouldn’t hold an edge for nothing. So, I put a resin bead around the apex of the rail from the tail two thirds up. This added about a half inch to the over all width of the board. I shaped the bead so the rail now had a nice edge on it. Ok, now I was set… set for a fall. The edge, added width and over all thickness made the board too stiff. I would have needed to gain about 50 lbs to be able to turn the darn thing. Almost every time I’d go to set an edge on a wave bigger than waist high I’d fall flat on my face. I wanted to rail surf the thing and didn’t have the body size for it. The learning curve continued…

Learning what worked was all trial and error. Board lengths, thicknesses, rail profiles, widths, outline curves, rockers… finding all the right ingredients. Ya know what? I wish I would have taken notes. Though there may have been others, the only guy I ever saw take notes was Nat Young.

D.R.

Something similar to what was.

My Story post 26

The 7’2 was the first of many Greenough style boards I would ride. From the fall of ’68 into the early ‘70s I made myself a sizeable number of them.

It seems that people think that when you make surfboards you can get as many of them as you like because after all ‘you make them’…. Fact is they cost money, not retail or the bro deal but none the less blanks, fiberglass and resin are not cheap. So what I would do is sell the board I was riding and make myself another board, post haste, with the proceeds.

There was a stretch there from 1969 to about 1972 that I may have made myself a new board almost every month. I could go surf then go in to work after surfing and stick my board in the sales area of the shop with a price tag on it. If someone came in for a board and wanted my board…. sold. Take the money, pay for another blank and start mowing foam. I went from the first 7’2 down to 6’0, a couple inches at a time in not more than 6 months.

I remember reports coming in from Australia of the guys riding sub 6 foot boards. Wide, short and round outlines, full hulled bottoms with big single fins. Hard driving bottom turns engaging as much rail as possible. Sweeping 180 degree turn backs. It was all new territory. If you fell you swam, so there were consequences. But it didn’t matter. Paddle hard, work hard, project your thoughts into the next wave until you’re going where you want to and making it all work.

Looking at some of the old surf films of the era the moves don’t look that radical by today’s standards. But at the time it was.

D.R.

Riding my first Greenough style board

Winter for the surfer means winter storms that generate sizable surf. And of course some unpleasant weather.

This past week here in Ventura we had rain for 5 out of the last 7 days. And it looks like the rain will continue through this coming week for 3 or 4 days. Along with the rain the temperatures have been below 60 here at the beach most everyday. The Rivers fill and empty their brown colored, debris fill waters into the ocean. The town of Ventura has two rivers. The Ventura river on it’s north west side and the Santa Clara river not more that 2 miles south from the Ventura river just below the Ventura Marina. So the waters around Ventura during winter storms get pretty ugly. And not healthy to enter for surfing.

My shop is not heated and temps below 60 degrees are not good to laminate surfboards in…. makes for a rather unproductive week. Resin takes it’s time curing. But we make due.

Though temps along the beach are not too cold, inland not even 15 miles the temperatures drop to freezing and below. With the rain comes snow and the mountains around Ventura get a pretty white covering this time of year. Saturday we had a dry day so my wife and I went for a drive inland and took in the views.

If you surf the upper side of the Fair Grounds during the winter you sometimes will see snow covering the mountains behind Ojai. Visible looking up the Ventura river valley.

I stood right at the Ventura rivers edge and took this picture looking at the surf.

Doing a 180 degree turn I took a picture of the mountains.

This would be the same view if you were in the lineup. I’ll tell you what… the morning wind that comes down the river valley from those snow covered mountains is cold. Maybe not as cold as what some of you get up north or on the east coast but for this So Cal guy it’s cold!

D.R.

My Story post 25

The 7’6 vee bottom worked for me through the spring and summer of 1968. If I remember correctly at MP we were making boards in the sevens for most of the ’68 season. So what I was riding was pretty much standard fair, as far as size was concerned.

Then later in the year a couple of the guys I worked with started riding boards right around seven foot and doing well with them. These shorter boards were foiled different than the vee bottoms we’d all been riding. The vee bottoms had a rail line and profile similar to the long boards we used to ride. These newer shorter boards were different. The decks had an ‘S’ curve to them and the bottoms transitioned from rounded belly under the nose to flat in the tail. And, the rail line was up in the nose and down in the tail. They rode different too.

The vee bottom boards started to show a weakness in hard driving bottom turns and because of their length you still would move forward and back for trimming in the wave. The desire was to not move on the board but be able to stand in pretty much one place on the board and work the wave from the one spot.

Riding closer to the critical part of the wave and staying right there in the pocket was the ultimate in surfing. Climbing and dropping, racing under, along and with the curl of the wave was in our sites, getting there was the quest. These new boards were going to get us there. The foiled design, rails and rocker curves were going to make it happen. My coworkers and friends, Mike and Richie, made a couple of these new boards for them selves with direction from George Greenough. I followed in the fall of ’68 and made one for myself. It was 7’2

D.R.

Another foam count down.

Most everyone knows by now that Walker Foam closed their operation down the week before Christmas. So all the guys that have been using Walker will be counting down their inventory of Walker Blanks until they are all gone. It happened with Clark and now with Walker.

For me…. I’ve only got about a half dozen Walkers in stock. Funny, I still have about 3 Clark blanks. Not that the Clarks are anything special… just the few I have were for styles of boards I really do very little of so there they sit. The Walkers on the other hand will get used up quickly. I liked Walker foam very much but they weren’t my only supplier so I like everyone else will just move on.

Not all surfboard foam is alike. Densities vary, blank selections vary, deliveries or will call only suppliers. Glue ups, stringers, rocker curves all play into what board builders go through when dealing with foam.

If you make a certain model, say a high performance long board, the blank that is usually used for that model needs to be accommodating to the over all shape of the board. If I have to change to a different 9’4 blank it will not have the same foam volume or thickness distribution as the one I was always using before. So I will have to work up a new routine for shaping my high performance long board out of a different blank than what I’d been using. It’s difficult and time consuming to make blank changes and have repeat ability. Changing blanks all the time messes with your consistency. Which is why guys find a foam they like and stay with it.

Now if you have blanks machine cut, which I don’t, it’s not as big a problem. Still you have to get a blank that the board you want to make will fit into but, the machine does all the hard milling and getting the foil and rocker all done for you.

Fortunately there are a number of foam suppliers now and I’ve got a couple that are willing to work with me and the particular stuff I want for my boards. Thank God, and the foam guys.

D.R.

I wrote the below two paragraphs last December 31.

Milestones, everybody has them…. an important event or turning point. As well, a marker that tells us how far we’ve gone. For the New Year most of us look back and reflect at least a little and say we made it through another one. The marker.

Important events can happen any time of course, and can be something pleasant or not so pleasant. A turning point? Sometimes we can go a long while before we even notice we had one. Then it’s “hey, things are different now and you know what? It all started way back when”. I’ve been going through a turning point for the last half of this…now past year. So I guess you could say it’s not a turn but a long curve. I’ll save the story for another time.

Now it’s December 31, 2007 so I guess I should tell the story…

Some time during the year 2006 I began to realize that the person I was working for went about the surfboard business and building process in a way that was completely different than what I wanted to be involved with. Aside from the fact that work had slowed down to numbers that weren’t enough to make a living at, my working environment was quite uncomfortable. At the same time I was hearing from people interested in seeing reissues of boards that I had done in my past. The whole retro thing and a more history conscious surfing population has helped that, I think.

I wanted and needed a place that I could put my heart into my work, a place where I could really enjoy what I did and the creative juices would flow. So between Christmas and New Years day of last year I gathered all my gear from the shaping bay I worked out of and began setting up my own place.

The turning point can be looked back upon now that the year is ending. And I’ve settled into a nice high end board craft shop I call home, looking forward with hope, encouragement and plan to be making some of the best performing and best crafted surfboards ever in the year ahead.

And may I say thanks for taking some time to read my stories and your interest in D.R. Surfboards.

Happy New Year!

Dennis Ryder

So what kind of stuff does a surfer guy have on his Christmas tree?

I never realized how beach and surf specific some of the ornaments are that we put on our tree every year. My wife decorated the tree pretty much by herself this year, can’t remember what I was up too. But, I got to looking at her handy work and thought ‘geez, can’t tell what this house is into’.

Gotta have your surfboard ornament… and of course a ‘sshlipa ‘ or two.

The hula girl is a must.

What else was on the tree? A nice Aloha shirt ornament. Among other things, Santa dressed in Aloha shirt, shorts, sandles and a lei around his neck.

What kind of stuff does a surfer guy or girl get under the Christmas tree?

A surfboard would be good. Kind of big but, that would be nice. How about a wet suit. That’s a good one, fits into a box and looks like all the other presents. And of course the afternoon of Christmas day you’ve got to go test the new suit at the beach.

A new set of fins for your board is good too… make an older board seem new and different. A board bag. What about all the surf videos. That can help keep the stoke.

Wax, can’t be without wax. A few years ago my son went to the local surf shop and said he wanted to buy a whole box of wax. The kids behind the counter told him he couldn’t buy a whole box. “Why not?” “well you just can’t” So he started loading the counter with bars of wax until the box was empty and had them ring up each bar one at a time.

I still haven’t gone through all that wax yet! Great present.

Merry Christmas!

D.R.

My Story post 24

1968 was a fun year for me. After returning to Ventura and getting a job shaping at MP things began to turn around pretty quick. The surf scene was changing from the colorful long board days to an underground movement.

I went out to the William Dennis shop after returning to Ventura and shaped myself a stringerless 8’2 Vee bottom. Sprayed the deck with black slipcheck and took the baby to the beach. The board had an OK ride but I never got much of a chance to dial it in because it was stolen. Right from my little cottage house where I kept it, some guy nicked my board. That has got to be one of the most disappointing things… having your surfboard stolen.

It wasn’t long before I was out at William Dennis shaping another board. This time a 7'6 Vee bottom. But I got real cocky with this one. The worker bees at MP weren’t allowed to make boards for themselves at the shop there, so I’d go out to WD and do my thing. It just so happened that Morey had an editorial published in Surfer Magazine about gypsy board builders and how the industry suffered from these underground guys, etc. That was late spring or early summer of ’68 now and all the young guys thought what? We’re going to do what we want… get over it. So here I am… I work for the guy and I go make myself a board, then for fun, I make a label with a hippie looking guy on it with the name Gypsy Surfboards.

The really funny thing was the day I went to launch my new board. It was a Saturday morning, I was walking down Front St. on my way to the point and right when I got at the MP shop… it was on Front St. which was right around the corner from where I lived. Here comes Morey in the MP van to open the shop sales room for the day. I say 'hey Tom check out my new board ' and hold up my board with the Gypsy label in plain view.

The look on Morey’s face…. priceless.

But geez, what a smart ass I was, and went to lengths it seems to be that way. What was I thinking? Gotta laugh though… funny story.

D.R.

Funny how big surf arrives on Wednesdays. Yeah, everybody knows we had big surf this week. Even my mom, who lives inland about 40 miles saw it on the news.

I called my mom on Thursday the 6^th to wish her a happy birthday. She says, “oh I saw the big waves and I just knew you were out there, I was thinking, now he shouldn’t be doing this but… I just knew you would be out there, you wouldn’t stay away”. Too cute, she celebrated her 86^th birthday and she still worries about her son, who’s 59, getting hurt or whatever… surfing.

Now let’s see…. I started surfing when I was 13 so; this has been going on for 46 years? Well not really. Because inlanders that know nothing about the beach and surfing never knew what was going on along the coast, the news media had better things to do. So my mom and everybody else never knew what the surf conditions where like. These days the swells get so advertised, or is it sensationalized, that when the swells do show up it’s almost anticlimactic.

I stopped by the point on my way to the shop Wednesday, as I do almost everyday, to check the surf and conditions. It was really big. And so was the crowd watching. There were no parking spaces. There was a sign at the end of “C” Street warning of high surf and to stay away.

What happened to the days when the surf was big and it was no big deal? When there were places to park your car if you wanted to check the surf. When there weren’t news crews waiting on the sand at the pier to film a rescue and then go interview the person rescued.

I still know when we have big surf. I can hear it at night from my house. I can smell and feel the mist it creates in the air. I can look at a tide chart and determine when the best times to surf are. Yeah all that, then brace yourself for all the commotion at the beach.

I liked it better when you could go about your business and no one noticed. Oh well…it's OK mom, I'm doing fine, no need worry.

D.R.

Today my wife and I went down to the annual Ventura Christmas Street Fair. The city hosts these street fairs where they block off 4 blocks of Main St. down town and rent vendor space to crafters, etc. People come from all over the county… I’m guessing… to browse all the booths. It’s a cool time to find unique Christmas gifts.

There are a ton of people walking up and down the street, you never know who you might run into. So who was it today? Mickey Munoz. My wife and I where at one of the booths that had some nice pictures of Ventura Pier that where mounted on those magnet sheets so you can stick the picture on your frig. Anyway, I see a friend who had just bought one or the Ventura pictures. He comes over and shows me his purchase and then says “did you see Mickey?" Mickey walks over, whom I don’t think I had ever met, we’re introduced and start talking. I ask "what are you doing up here?" 'cause he lives down south somewhere. Turns out he came up to go to Bruce Browns birthday party in Santa Barbara last night. I think he said it was his 70^th.

So this year I run into Tom Morey at the NAMM show. I saw Greg Noll up in Santa Barbara… that may not count because it was a planned event but Kemp Aaberg happened to be there, and now today Mickey Munoz. Who else will I run into this year? Still the month of December to go.

OK enough name dropping. The really cool thing I saw at the street fair was some furniture made with surfboards. Ever not want to get rid of your old favorite ride but not have a place for it either?

Make it into a chair. Or have this guy do it for you.

Those things are really cool! I gotta get one of my boards made into a chair.

D.R.

36 more days left in the year! So what does that mean? The year is 90 % over…. wish I could say I’ve completed 90% of the stuff I wanted to accomplish.

This year had a bumpy start. We… me and my two partners.. signed the lease on a small shop last November to start a high end laminating shop. We didn’t start any work in the place until the end of January. But as the weeks and months moved on we settled into the place and work began to grow until we are now about at capacity. That’s a good thing.

Now that the shop is running good I can get back to more shaping. Since I’ve been working hard in the laminating shop it’s been hard to keep a good schedule in my shaping bay, but things are beginning to change. The new year is coming and I’ve got a number of new boards I’ll be bringing out.

The Quad Long Board is tested enough now, so I’ll be making that available as a new model and I hope to be making a new short board available too. Actually this is what should be called an alternative short board. A stubby built around one of my Greenough outlines with a contemporary bottom shape and multiple fins. The board has been in the water now for a couple months, ridden as a tri and then quad. I made the board convertible so we could test it with the different fin set ups and determine which way gave better performance.

Well, I’m happy to say the board is going off! Similar to a fish in size and foam volume but will draw a good line with excellent maneuverability and down the line speed. About the only thing I need to do now with the board is come up with a name for it and start making them. I’m stoked!

D.R.

The short board alternative

I’m no saint in the water and no doubt bother some because I do go after plenty waves but, sometimes things happen I just don’t understand…I wrote this after surfing one day in the late summer or early fall of 2006.

What is it about some guys? Is it so necessary to be competitive and aggressive all the time?

Today there was a nice fairly consistent SW swell with sets head high + a little. About 2:00 p.m. I went down for a surf at the point and after about 30 minutes in the water the crowed thinned out and there was enough surf to keep the people in the water in a good rotation.

I was paddling back out to the lineup when a set wave bowled up in front of me. I was in perfect position to turn around and drop in but I let it go because there was a kid just above me that started to stroke into the wave. Well he didn’t get over the edge, a good one got by. Oh well, happens all the time.

I get out to the lineup just when another set starts through. The first wave me and another guy are in position and the other guy looks at me and says go ahead. I take a few strokes and who hustles across in front of me to get position and drop in from behind is the kid that had just missed that other wave.

‘What? Do you not take notice who’s in the water’? I may be old but paddle strong. Kooks aren’t strong paddlers. I may have been on a tanker but I don’t wear a leash. Guys that don’t ware leashes in head high plus surf usually know what’s up and can surf. Pay attention…..Think.
So the kid and I both drop in shoulder to shoulder. Just as I’m about to set my edge I turn to the guy and say, “to bad you missed the last one.” I turn off the bottom giving him enough room, he turns up behind and above me so I slow down and straighten out a bit so he can go behind me and I can get him in front. Well when he turned off the top behind me, he fell, the nose of his board dropped inches from my legs. No harm no foul…I continued on... a nice ride.

I paddle back out to the lineup and after about a 5 minute lull get the second wave of a new set, one of the bigger waves of the day. Because of the chop I get hung up and ended up making a late drop that puts me a little behind. Fight through a couple sections, slide under some white water and just get back in the green when that same kid drops in on me. Don’t know if he heard me but I said “what.. again?” He squirted out in front, turned back, while I watched, squirted out again and then finally pulled out.

Do you think if a guy has gone that far without falling that he most likely is not going to fall at all and would like to have the wave to himself? Do you think that if you wait your turn there just might be a few slides for you?

Be nice, be courteous in the water. Save your aggression and competitive attitude for contests. If you have to be competitive then be competitive with your friends. Not strangers in the water.

I still remember the surf that day and the episode... good fun surf, funny how some things just get stuck in your head.

D.R.

My story post 23

The beginning days of William Dennis for me were tough. It was the fall of ’67. I went from making pretty good money at MP to making very little overnight. I had also left the room I had been renting so really didn’t have a place to live.

For a time I stayed at Blinkie's place in the Marina area, but eventually left that scene for my van. Yeah! Like a homeless guy I lived in my VW bus for a short time. I don’t remember who the other guys were now, but three of us with our vans would round up at night at the point in Ventura and sleep. There was nothing there but dirt, and no people around, was not patrolled, so it worked.

Then I hooked up with two guys and we found ourselves a small place in mid town. Nice, halfway between the beach and Calens Rd. where the shop was. Though things looked promising with the new surfboard venture, because we had to redo some of the improvements we made to the industrial bay we got, I pretty much ran out of money. Had to sell my van to make ends meet. Started walking to the shop… maybe a couple miles or so… then didn’t have my share of the rent money for the place I had with the guys so ended up back living with my parents. It was a dark time that didn’t turn around until spring ’68.

Morey worked a deal early in ’68 with Bob Mctavish to start making the Mctavish tracker. I went looking for a shaping job and Morey put me back to work shaping. It was me and Richard Deese. As production ramped up into the season, between the two of us we shaped close to 100 boards a week. We used full templates for outlining with a router, hogged the blanks as fast as we could with our planers, used a grinder to sand them out before dialing in the rails and final screening.

It’s all a blur of foam dust now, but an interesting time no less. I found a place to rent right around the corner from the Front St. shop. Had a bicycle for transportation, and was just a short walk to the point for surf. Plus, my friend Peter worked in the MP sales room and had a car so we’d go off and surf wherever after work. It was work and surf, work and surf… with the weekends off to surf.

D.R.

The Quad Journal

I’ve been riding my 8’0 that I refitted with a quad fin set up for the past couple weeks now. Surfed it again this afternoon in some shoulder high waves at the point. I’ve gotten enough time on it to compare the way the 8’0 works opposed to my 9’1 quad.

The tails of both boards are very similar in shape and size. The one thing that is different is the fin system. The 9’1 is fitted with the O’fish’l fin system… my standard or go to system with 4 9/16” side fins and 3” back fins. The 8’0, which was built before I started using the O’fish’l system and is fitted with FCS and has their S4 quad set in it… 4.48” side fins and 3.88” back fins. The FCS fins are made with that newer material, are stiff and the side fins have the concave inside shaped to them. The O’fish’l fins are made of nylon and the side fins are single foiled or asymmetrical.

Initially, and before I actually surfed the 9’1, I was thinking the nylon fins would have to much soft flex to them. However after riding the board I was amazed at how fluid the turns were and how much drive I was getting from the fin set up. Honestly I had never experienced anything like it. I was so excited about how the 9’1 was working I thought I’d make a new 8’0 with the same fin set up. But, I’ve been so busy and my old 8’0 could be retro fitted easy enough I did the refit instead.

Now, the results I’m getting from the 8’0 refit are good enough. A week ago I surfed that board in some really good surf one day until I literally couldn’t stand up anymore, I got pretty worn out. That board was just going off… flying on some excellent down the line racy waves. However the board overall does not have the same feel as the 9’1. The turns and turn backs are good but not as fluid and driving as the 9’1. As well the 9’1 is pretty stable in white water and chop where the 8’0 is squirrelly with little positive movement in white water and tentative in chop. At this point I’ve got to say it’s the fins. My O’fish’l setup is working beyond what I expected, the FCS set is not performing near as well.

I’ve got to make myself a new 8’0 with my O’fish’l set up… more to come.

D.R.

I recently had a conversation with a friend about surfboard prices. Actually the two of us have had these conversations a few times now. Since I’m looking at new local representation, pricing has been on my mind.

In the early days of the surfboard industry… this would be when boards started being made with foam and fiberglass… the guys that made boards dealt directly with their customers. Eventually a handful of guys, mainly in California, had full fledged businesses. These businesses did everything in house. With the exception of blowing foam the process of building boards was done start to finish at one location and this even included a sales room or store front. That’s what we call factory direct now.

Because surfboards were factory direct the finished boards were never given a traditional retail markup. That factory direct price became what the market would bare for the retail price of the surfboard. Then as the various board builders began distributing surfboards beyond their own stores the retail price remained at the factory direct price. That’s what everyone was accustomed to. Consequently the surf shops that sold boards they did not make could not work a normal retail price for the surfboards they sold and had a difficult if not impossible task of making any kind of margin via surfboard sales.

That price dilemma remains today, except for boards that are made overseas. Because the cost of making surfboards in a country like China is so much less than domestic costs the imported boards can and do have a more inline retail mark up. That’s a good thing for the retailer, finally being able to see a decent margin in their surfboard sales.

The domestic builder now being faced with inexpensive imported surfboards and the retailers turning to these boards because of the margins has to show the value of the hand made, domestically made surfboard. With unsurpassed craftsmanship and staying on the cutting edge of design and performance. Offering what can not be made over seas.

D.R.